Da'ud Ibn Al-Adid

Daoud ibn al-Adid (also spelled ''Dawud'' and ''Da'ud''; ar, داود بن العاضد, Dāwūd ibn al-ʿĀḍid), known by the regnal name of al-Ḥāmid liʾllāh () among the Isma'ili faithful, was the 25th imam of Hafizi Isma'ilism, and pretender to the Fatimid Caliphate. He spent most of his life in captivity at the hands of the Ayyubid dynasty.

Life

Daoud was the oldest son of the last Fatimid caliph, al-Adid li-Din Allah (). Like his immediate predecessors, al-Adid would be little more than a figurehead monarch, effectively a puppet in the hands of courtiers and strongmen who disputed with one another over the spoils of the tottering Fatimid regime. The last and most notable of these strongmen was Saladin, who became vizier and the ''de facto'' ruler of Egypt in March 1169.

Fall of the Fatimid Caliphate

Under pressure from his Syrian overlord, Nur al-Din, Saladin began to undermine the religious foundations of the Fatimid regime, undermining Fatimid-sponsored Hafizi Isma'ilism and restoring Sunni supremacy in Egypt. This culminated on 10 September 1171, when the Shafi'i jurist Najm al-Din al-Khabushani publicly proclaimed the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph, al-Mustadi, instead of al-Adid's, and read out a list of the Fatimids' crimes. When al-Adid died a few days later, on 13 September 1171, Saladin proclaimed the Fatimid caliphate as abolished. Officially, according to the medieval Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, this was because al-Adid had failed to designate Daoud (an infant at the time) as heir ().

The new Ayyubid regime placed the numerous Fatimid clan— Qadi al-Fadil places the total at 252, 98 men and 154 women—under house arrest in the palace of Barjawan, under the supervision of Baha al-Din Qaraqush. Their enormous treasures were divided among Saladin and Nur al-Din, and the famous Fatimid libraries were split up and sold or confiscated by Saladin's officials. Saladin persecuted the remaining Isma'ili faithful, many of whom fled to Upper Egypt.

Life in captivity

Daoud remained in captivity, but his followers still recognized him as their imam, with the regnal title of , . During the abortive pro-Fatimid conspiracy that was suppressed in April 1174, however, some of the pro-Fatimid conspirators are recorded having favoured appointing one of his adult cousins as caliph instead. A pro-Fatimid uprising followed in late summer of the same year in Upper Egypt. It was supported by the hereditary governor of Aswan, Kanz al-Dawla, but suppressed in early September by Saladin's brother, al-Adil. Another pro-Fatimid uprising occurred in 1176, in the name of Daoud, or by an Isma'ili missionary claiming to be Daoud, at Qift. Al-Adil again went to suppress the new revolt and executed as many as 3,000 locals in reprisals.

By 1188, however, an attempted uprising by a small group who called out the Shi'a battle-cry "Family of Ali" during the night found no response from the people of Cairo. In 1207–8, the Fatimid prisoners were moved to the Cairo Citadel. In the same year, Daoud died. His followers received permission from al-Adil, by then the sultan of Egypt, to mourn him in public, but the sultan used the occasion to arrest their leaders and confiscate their property.

Heirs and aftermath

Despite the separation of male and female prisoners, Daoud apparently managed to beget two sons, reportedly with slave women secretly smuggled into his chambers. The mother of the eldest, Sulayman, surnamed Badr al-Din, was then smuggled to Upper Egypt, where her son was born. It was only later, likely under al-Adil's son and successor, al-Kamil (), that Sulayman was captured and confined in the Cairo Citadel. Sulayman ibn Daoud died in 1248, apparently childless, thus ending the direct Fatimid line. Some Isma'ili partisans claimed that he had a son who was hidden—repeating the common motif of the 'Hidden Imam'. As late as 1298, a pretender claiming to be the son of Sulayman ibn Daoud, and also called himself Daoud appeared in Upper Egypt, but by this time the Isma'ilis had been reduced to small isolated enclaves, the last traces of which are recorded in the 14th century.

References

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{{Portal bar, Islam, Fatimid Caliphate, Egypt, Biography

12th-century births
1200s deaths
Fatimid dynasty
Egyptian Ismailis
Hafizi imams
People who died in prison custody
Heirs apparent who never acceded
Prisoners and detainees of the Ayyubid Sultanate
12th-century people from the Fatimid Caliphate
12th-century Islamic religious leaders
13th-century Islamic religious leaders